1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a hand tool and more specifically to a hand tool such as a utility knife having a handle/body which can be quickly separated and re-connected via the use of a quick acting connector element so as to permit an instrument such as a blade, which is operatively mounted thereon, to be either stored in the handle or changed with a different/sharper one.
2. Description of the Relevant Art
In utility knives, by way of example, in order to permit the storage of a blade or allow the interchange with another which is stored within the hollow of the knife handle, it is necessary to provide some form of simple connection arrangement which permits a user to disconnect and separate the two halves of the handle or housing and then reconnect the same, both quickly and easily. In order to achieve this end, a simple screw connection or connections have been used. An example of such an arrangement is found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,884,342 issued on Dec. 5, 1989, in the name of McNamara et al. In other similar arrangements, these screws have, in order to facilitate disconnection even when a screwdriver is not available, been provided with suitably size slots into which a coin can be inserted and used in lieu thereof.
However, with this type of arrangement, the screw can be easily dropped and lost. To overcome this shortcoming, it has been proposed to avoid the use of simple screws and to use more specialized arrangements which feature screws having large diameter easy to grasp knobs or members of the nature disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,561,906 issued on Oct. 8, 1996 in the name of Desmarais, and in U.S. Pat. No. 4,068,375 issued on Jan. 17, 1978 in the name of Ratherburn et al.
However, these arrangements, while representing an improvement over the use of screws which require either a screwdriver or small coin to loosen/tighten, still suffer from the drawback that they can require a plurality of turns to loosen/tighten the halves of the housing. Further these connectors can usually separate from the housings which they operatively interconnect, and accordingly also run the risk of becoming accidentally dropped and lost.